Elektra: No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller from the Author of ARIADNE

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Due to the numerous storylines and characters involved the book could have become quite confusing. With Ms. Saints considerable writing skills the book avoids this problem and is clearly laid out and entertaining. Utilizing well defined, three dimensional characters and believable dialogue the book for the most part flows easily. Only in the lead up to the climax of the book did I find the story dragged a-bit and became boring. Menelaus can help Father with the ruling of Sparta,” Helen said. “And, of course, Father can help him in return.” They listened to him. He had a gift for bending the will of others to his own purpose. Even my clever cousin was enthralled by him, and I had thought no man’s intellect could ever be a match for hers. I thought of Menelaus, the adoration in his eyes when he looked at Helen. I wondered if she was right, if he’d be able to see things the way our father had done. If winning the contest in our halls really would be victory enough, whatever might happen later. A telling / retelling of one of Greek mythologies best known stories - the siege of Troy as the author breathes life, personality and soul into the story of Troy and all the best known characters with a lot of new faces as this particular story focuses on the women of this timeless tale.

In a world where women are nothing more than the pawns of powerful men, will Ariadne's decision to betray Crete for Theseus ensure her happy ending? Or will she find herself sacrificed for her lover's ambition? I shook my head. “I’ve heard stories about the family. The same ones as you. The curse of their ancestors, fathers killing their sons and brothers turning on each other. It’s all in the past, though, isn’t it?” I also wanted to say that I think it's absolutely beautifully that in every re-telling I read, there's always a mention of how drowned Achilles is in his grief after Patroclus left the land of the living. A specific quote, "He would not burn his beloved's body until he had sated his vengeance" gave me the chills. I love that it's a universal thought that they were in love, that... they are half each other's soul, as the poet's say ( The Song of Achilles). We learn of Helen's marriage to Menelaus and why she chose him; of Clytemnestra's marriage to Agamemnon and her giving birth to all their children; of Elektra's childhood; of Cassandra's curse and why she received it from the god Apollo. Then, there is the war and the return of Agamemnon and ... more. Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae of the House of Atreus, mother of Iphigenia, Elektra and Orestes. Her rage resulting from Agamemnon’s sacrifice of her firstborn daughter Iphigenia in Aulis before the Trojan War wreaks havoc in Mycenae and the cursed House of AtreusFinally, one day I will be tired of Trojan War's retellings but not today and definitely not with this book! I shook my head, as though I could dislodge the idea altogether. It would all change, even more so. A hundred men had come to marry her; the next one would take Menelaus’ place in an instant. Helen noticed my silence, perhaps read some reproval in it, for she straightened her shoulders and fixed me directly in her gaze. “You know that our mother was singled out by Zeus,” she said. “A mortal woman beautiful enough to catch his eye from the peak of Mount Olympus. If our father were not of a quiet and uncomplaining disposition … who knows how he may have felt? If he were more like Agamemnon than Menelaus, for example.” The story itself was familiar to me, and yet I felt engaged from start to finish. I have always seen Clytemnestra as a victim, Agamemnon as a monster, and so this version of the story appealed to me. I don't want to give anything away fro the readers who are unfamiliar with the story, but I felt for all the characters, so many women who were used as pawns in the games of men and gods and suffered for it. The writing flowed well, and there was no choppiness when Saint switched from one POV to another, though the most compelling chapters for me were the ones told by Clytemnestra. It is another feminist story, and these women are by no means shrinking violets. The wives, daughters, and mothers created their own brand of magic and menace as we learned of the dangers and terrible atrocities committed, by them, in the name of love, survival and revenge. Women who carried a grudge: unforgiving and unrelenting. However, I loved the portrayal and depth of Agamemnon’s character in the book – not likeable but it was great to see more depth and colour to this very powerful character in Greek mythology.

Every word I speak is unwelcome. My throat is raw from the words that are torn from me when I touch someone, when I look into their eyes and see the blinding white truth. My prophecies rip out my insides, but still they come, unbidden, even as I quake at the consequences.” In this, it's mostly a whimper and daddy worship and mommy hating her husband and taking a lover and then going "Oh, My" when crap hits the fan. And then we have some of the OTHER more memorable female characters from across Greece, on the other side of the war, to give a counterpoint, but it's weird and hardly necessary at all except to bring in the action that has been so missing from the primary tale. I found Elektra really hard to sympathise with at times- she is a selfish character and her empathy for others is hardly there. She chooses not to see things from Clytemnestra’s POV where her father, Agamemnon (Clytemnestra’s husband) purposely murders and sacrifices Iphigenia for a wind to take the army to Troy. Instead as Elektra takes the view of the sacrifice being god ordained- she cannot understand why Clytemnestra is grieving and hating her father. She then spends her time on out thinking about revenge. She also doesn’t seem to care about others around her- especially how she treats her friend Georgios and has a weird Oedipus complex about Agamemnon. Our father leaped up, overjoyed that Odysseus had saved his triumphant day from almost certain disaster. “I will sacrifice my finest horse!” he declared. “And you shall all make your promise to the gods upon its blood.”I felt a little victory in having prompted him to reply. A breeze rippled across the water, and I felt a yearning all at once for something I couldn’t name. So much was happening—weddings and war—and none of it involved me. “I know what Thyestes did,” I answered, “to your father and to you. How he stole your kingdom.” Don’t get me wrong I adore Greek mythology. My degree was in classical civilisations - so it meant this was a straight forward read, I knew who everyone was and what was going to happen.

I cannot hope for the future, for I know what it is to become.Whenever I'm in a reading slump and I need something to shake me out of my funk, Greek mythology is what I reach for. The tales of passion and tragedy, war and loss, glory and triumph always hit the right spot for me. So I'm a bit flummoxed that Elektra didn't turn out to be the reading experience I was hoping for. A brilliant read’ Women & Home | ‘A spirited retelling’ Times | ‘ Beautiful and absorbing’ Fabulous | ‘A vivid reimagining of Greek mythology’Harper’s Bazaar | ‘Jennifer Saint has done an incredible job’ Red I also wanted to say that I think it's absolutely beautifully that in every re-telling I read, there's always a mention of how drowned Achilles is in his grief after Patroclus left the land of the living. A specific quote, "He would not burn his beloved's body until he had sat

Each of the three POC characters are deliciously complex, and the relationship between Elektra and Clytemnestra is brilliant. How does one get to the point where the murder of your own mother seems not only reasonable but morally necessary? Why would Elektra take her father’s ‘side’ after what he did to her sister? Why did Clytemnestra ‘let’ it all happen? The answers to these questions have no easy answer and are explored in all their grounded and tragic glory, adding human emotion and compassion to these women’s stories. While naturally, the women are not on the same side, never in the story is one the ‘bad guy’, each of them knows why they do what they do and narratively it makes sense. Inter-character relationships are at the heart of this story regardless of whether the characters are geographically together and Saint depicts them as difficult, conflicting, illogical, inspiring, desperate and rejuvenating all at once, whether it is the relationship between Clytemnestra and Elektra, Elektra and Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and her sister Helen (a character who is dealt with superbly), Cassandra and Helen or even Clytemnestra and Cassandra. Elektra is the youngest daughter of Clytemnestra and Agememnon. Yep, the Agamemnon who led the war against Troy after his younger brother's wife had been "kidnapped" (we don't really know if Helen went there voluntarily or not) by Paris. If he did it to indeed help his brother or because Troy was so rich and he wanted the spoils as well as the fame, we'll also never know for sure. To be blessed by Zeus in such a way was a thing of glory. That’s what everyone said. If Leda, our mother, had been deemed lovely enough by the ruler of the gods himself, it was a great honor to our family. It was not a disgrace to our father to raise the product of such a union himself. I could see that every man in the room was imagining it. They had all envisaged being the one to have her, but Odysseus had soured the dream. They gazed up at him, enrapt, waiting for him to reveal the solution to the conundrum he had presented. Clytemnestra grew up in Helen of Troy's shadow. She was a second choice (even when she wasn't). Yet she ended up married to a "great" hero all the same, Agamemnon. Clouded by grief over his choices, her life becomes tainted with ending his. A mother's grief.